The Android Market licensing service is a powerful tool for protecting your applications against unauthorized use. The License Verification Library (LVL) is a key component. A determined attacker who's willing to disassemble and reassemble code can eventually hack around the service; but application developers can make the hackers' task immensely more difficult, to the point where it may simply not be worth their time.

Out of the box, the LVL protects against casual piracy; users who try to copy APKs directly from one device to another without purchasing the application. Here are some techniques to make things hard, even for technically skilled attackers who attempt to decompile your application and remove or disable LVL-related code.